Tag: trump

VR outfit Oculus has found itself suffering from the fall out of its founder Palmer Luckey financing right-wing anti-Clinton pro-Trump internet trolls last week.

Luckey has since apologised and denied that he favours Donald Trump but already Oculus saw some fall out with developers saying they would no longer support the platform.

Superhypercube developer Polytron said in a statement that in a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform,”.

Other developers including Tomorrow Today Labs and Scruta Games also echoed similar sentiments saying they would not support the VR platform “as long as he is employed there.”

Now Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe and head of content Jason Rubin have spoken out on Oculus founder’s recent apology and secret contribution to a pro-Donald Trump group that focuses on s**tposting and spreading memes and images to disparage Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Iribe wrote in a post on his personal Facebook page published on Saturday. “I know that Palmer is deeply sorry for the impact this situation is having on the company, our partners and the industry. Everyone at Oculus is free to support the issues or causes that matter to them, whether or not we agree with those views.

“It is important to remember that Palmer acted independently in a personal capacity, and was in no way representing the company.”

It seems that hackers with links to Tsar Putin, are practising making sure that Donald Trump is elected by tampering with the electronic voting systems.

The FBI has warned that Arizona and Illinois voter registration systems were infiltrated by foreign hackers who downloaded personal data on up to 200,000 voters.

The Untouchables have warned US election officials to increase computer security measures after it uncovered evidence that hackers have targeted two state election databases in recent weeks,

Citing a state election board official, Yahoo News said the Illinois voter registration system was shut down for 10 days in late July after hackers downloaded personal data on up to 200,000 voters.

The Arizona attack was more limited and involved introducing malicious software into the voter registration system, Yahoo News quoted a state official as saying. No data was removed in that attack, the official said.

US intelligence officials have become increasingly worried that hackers sponsored by Russia or other countries may attempt to disrupt the November presidential election. Donald Trump owes a lot of cash to Russian oligarchs so it would be helpful to Tsar Putin to have someone in the White House who does what he is told.

Officials and cybersecurity experts say recent breaches at the Democratic National Committee and elsewhere in the Democratic party were likely carried out by people within the Russian government. Kremlin officials have denied the allegations of Moscow’s involvement.

Concerns about election computer security prompted the homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, to convene a conference call with state election officials earlier this month, to offer help in making their voting systems more secure.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has hired security outfit CrowdStrike after claiming his campaign has been hacked just like the Democrats.

But while the Democrats were almost certainly hacked by Trump’s allies in the Kremlin, it is less clear how significant the Republican hack really was. The US press claims that the “tools and techniques” used to hack Republican targets resemble those employed in attacks on Democratic Party organisations, including the DNC and Clinton’s campaign organisation. The implication is that the Russians were also spying on Trump.

Apparently one Trump staff member’s email account was infected with malware in 2015 and sent malicious emails to colleagues. It was unclear whether or not the hackers actually gained access to campaign computers. So basically any hacker who uses email to get into a system is hired by the Kremlin, which does not sound very logical.

The Trump campaign has hired security firm CrowdStrike, which also is assisting the Democratic National Committee. The company declined to comment.

Two US security officials said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have offered assistance to both political parties in identifying possible intrusions and upgrading their defenses against what one of the officials called “constantly evolving threats.”

Someone with too much time on his hands has discovered that the spilt (sic) personality in Donald Trump’s tweets are directly linked to the type of phone he uses.

When Trump wishes the Olympic team good luck, he’s tweeting from his iPhone. When he’s insulting a rival, he’s usually tweeting from an Android.

Trump has been seen in public with a Samsung Galaxy, and no one has seen him with an iPhone. The suggestion is that the iPhone tweets are being sent by someone else who is a little more reasonable.

Writing in his bog David Robinson, who is a Data Scientist at Stack Overflow, found that the that the Android and iPhone tweets are clearly from different people, posting during different times of day and using hashtags, links, and retweets in distinct ways.

“What’s more, we can see that the Android tweets are angrier and more negative, while the iPhone tweets tend to be benign announcements and pictures,” he wrote.

Tweets from the iPhone were 38 times as likely to contain either a picture or a link. This also makes sense if the campaign iPhone used to write “announcement” tweets about events.

More “emotionally charged” words, like “badly”, “crazy”, “weak”, and “dumb”, were overwhelmingly more common on Android. This supports the original hypothesis that this is the “angrier” or more hyperbolic account and this is the bouffant buffoon typing in his own words.

The Putin-backed US answer to Boris Johnson has a cunning plan to censor the internet if the US people put him into the White House.

Like many populist leaders, Donald Trump thinks there is mileage to be made in a moral crusade – in this case porn. After all he has some expertise on the subject, the internet just circulated some snaps of his missus in the altogether.

Donald Trump has pledged to crack down on internet pornography via corporate partnerships and possibly establishing a federal commission on the harmful effects of pornography.

He is backing an outfit called Enough is Enough, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to fighting online pornography, child pornography, child stalking and sexual predation. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton refused to sign the pledge, Enough is Enough said, though her campaign told EiE that she supported its goals.

In the pledge Trump promised to prevent the sexual exploitation of children which is all well and good, but he also agreed to better enforce Internet obscenity laws, and that exposure to Internet porn is “deforming the sexual development of younger viewers.”

In other words, he promised to clamp down on smut to protect children. And Enough is Enough really wants what it calls “aggressive enforcement of existing laws”.

Basically this will require the development of tools to track people when they visit porn sites and the filtering of porn.

Trump’s Twitter account, an unfiltered commentary on his thoughts of the day, hadn’t mentioned the pledge, neither had Trump’s Facebook account. We guess he will mention it later.

On Sunday, the New York Post published a nude photo of Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, on its Sunday cover. Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for the Trump campaign, appeared on CNN and called the photos “a celebration of the human body as art”.

No mention of what harm Melania’s boobies might do to children, other than perhaps silicone poisoning.

Trump is having to see off rumours that he has close links with Russian oligarchs particularly after it was revealed that the hackers behind the democratic party hack where part of an elite club formed by Tsar Putin.

Trump denied the allegations that Putin ordered Russian spooks to hack the Democratic National Conventions’ emails in order to benefit his campaign. But he then said he hoped that such hackers would find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails called on Russia to cyber-invade the United States to help get him elected.

“If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted. You’d see some beauties, so we’ll see,” he said during a press conference at his Miami-area hotel.

“Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you probably will be mightily rewarded by the press.”

This is the first time that an American politician has publically called for another nation state to conduct cyber warfare on his own country.

The call was roundly condemned by Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein who had a hand in making sure another president who tried something similar lost their job. Unlike Watergate, there is no need for any deep throats, Trump is opening calling for break-ins of democratic rivals. In fact in this case it is slightly worse, as Nixon did not rely on the Soviet Union to burgle Watergate (had he done so they might not have been caught).

“It ought to be apparent to all, and the Democrats should be able to make the case, that he is manifestly unsuited to be the president of the United States because of his recklessness with the national security,” Bernstein said.

Former National Review editor George Will told Fox News that Trump’s unreleased tax returns could reveal the nature of Trump’s relationship with Russia. “Perhaps one more reason why we’re not seeing his tax returns — because he is deeply involved in dealing with Russian oligarchs and others. Whether that’s good, bad or indifferent, it’s probably the reasonable surmise.”

Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort reiterated the candidate’s commitment to not releasing his returns. “Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them,” Manafort told CBS. “It has nothing to do with Russia, it has nothing to do with any country other than the United States and his normal tax auditing process.”

More than 145 tech power players have penned an open letter to the world+dog and all the ships at sea about the most likely republican candidate Donald Trump.

The letter, posted in the Medium, said that they had listened to Trump over the past year and had concluded he would be a disaster for innovation.

The authors of the letter hail from some of tech’s most powerful companies like Google, Facebook and Apple, as well as startups, venture capital firms, nonprofits and universities.

The names include Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, IAC’s Barry Diller, Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales. A disclaimer at the bottom notes that their views don’t reflect those of their companies so it is just personal and not business.

The authors slam Trump’s “anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people,” particularly when it comes to immigration. Trump’s immigration beliefs are in clear opposition to those of many Silicon Valley leaders, who have pushed for comprehensive immigration reform so they can keep their foreign developers.

More than half of the country’s “unicorns” — or private companies valued at $1 billion or more — have at least one immigrant founder.

The letter said that Trump had shown “poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works,” they wrote, citing his proposal to “shut down” parts of the Internet and the fact that he has revoked reporters’ press credentials.

“We stand against Donald Trump’s divisive candidacy. We embrace an optimistic vision for a more inclusive country, where American innovation continues to fuel opportunity, prosperity and leadership.”

Trump was not likely to get must support from Silicon Valley. For a start they are the sort of liberals that his supporters blame for everything. It is also not the first time that tech leaders have taken him to the cleaners. In June, Sam Altman attacked Trump’s “casual racism” as everyone knows that racism needs a jacket and tie and well-polished shoes.

Overjoyed at his victory over Gawker Media over the Hulk Hogan sex tape, Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel is taking court action to stop the press making jokes about Donald Trump’s hair.

Gawker reporter Ashley Feinberg published a lengthy investigation that sought to solve the enduring mystery of Donald Trump’s infamous mane, which she described as a “cotton candy hairspray labyrinth.”

Feinberg’s article claimed there was a link between Trump and the work of a $60,000-a-pop hair-extension company called Ivari International. All good stuff however, Thiel is not impressed. After all if you can make fun of political figures what is to stop you if a President is involved in a burglary and a cover-up of political rivals.

Thiel’s lawyer, Charles J. Harder, sent Gawker a letter on behalf of Ivari International’s owner and namesake, Edward Ivari, in which Harder claims that Feinberg’s story was “false and defamatory,” invaded Ivari’s privacy, intentionally inflicted emotional distress, and committed “tortious interference” with Ivari’s business relations.

It claims there were 19 different purportedly defamatory statements—almost all of which were drawn from several publicly available lawsuits filed against Ivari.

He demanded Gawker remove the story, say sorry and preservation of “all physical and electronic documents, materials and data in your possession” related to the story. It also insisted that Gawker reveal its sources on the story.

Harder goes on to threaten legal action over the story: “Your actions expose you to substantial monetary damages and punitive damages.”

One of the “defamatory” statements Gawker published, according to Harder, is this: “What’s more, Ivari’s New York location is inside Trump Tower—on the private floor reserved for Donald Trump’s own office.”

The source was Ivari’s own brochure, an archived version of his web site, and multiple advertisements Ivari placed in New York Magazine, all of which specified his New York address as being on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Another “defamatory” statement, Harder claims, were “taken from a lawsuit filed against Ivari by Alicia Roach.” In other words it is an official judicial proceeding which is protected by New York State’s fair report privilege.

Gawker said that Harder’s threats, seem to be a wider move to intimidate Gawker and its reporters from publishing true things about public figures – specifically Peter Thiel’s billionaire mates. It looks like the Hulk Hogan case, which has put Gawker into Chapter 11 has strengthened Thiel’s belief that he can censor the media.

Buzzfeed has turned down mroe than a million of dollars of Republican Party cash because it means supporting a candidate who has a policy of hating minorities.

Republican National Committee paid $1.3 million for adverts for its comedy candidate the bouffant buffoon and Boris Johnson clone, Donald Trump.

BuzzFeed said that it was worried about the site’s employees because it could not countenance “having employees make ads, or working at the company and having our site promoting things that limit our freedom and make it harder for them to live their lives… In general, we have taken the position that we won’t take ads for his presidential campaign.”

BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti wrote to his staff saying that in April, the RNC and BuzzFeed signed an agreement to “spend a significant amount on political advertisements slated to run during the Fall election cycle.”

Since Trump became the nominee his campaign has proven themselves to be “directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States,” because of proposed bans on Muslim immigration and comments about descendants of immigrants, among other policies.

“We don’t need to and do not expect to agree with the positions or values of all our advertisers. And as you know, there is a wall between our business and editorial operations. This decision to cancel this ad buy will have no influence on our continuing coverage of the campaign,” Peretti said in the memo.

BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said the decision was from the business side and would not affect coverage of the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile the Republicans are having a bit of a sulk. RNC chief strategist and spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement to CNN that the RNC “never intended” to use the ad space reserved with BuzzFeed anyway.

They also showed that they are the party of tackling real issues by saying it was terrible that BuzzFeed was taking money from a woman who was being investigated by the FBI for having emails sent to her home but would not take the money of a man blessed by the KKK, who wants to abandon the Geneva convention and would Nuke allies like the UK if he wins.

BuzzFeed has a tricky relationship with the Trump campaign, with its reporters being denied credentials or general entry to Trump rallies.

Comedy US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has threatened that Amazon will be facing antitrust charges if he is elected.

Trump claims that Amazon.com, the world’s biggest online retailer, has “a huge antitrust problem.” Trump also said Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, is using the newspaper to influence politicians in Washington to help Amazon on taxes.

“The Washington Post is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos, who controls Amazon. Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise. He’s using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed,” Trump said.

“He’s using the Washington Post … for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust,” Trump said.

“He thinks I’ll go after him for antitrust. Because he’s got a huge antitrust problem because he’s controlling so much, Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing,” Trump said.

Clearly he does not really care that he just gave Amazon a reason to sink as much money as is reasonable into rival candidates, but then again he has a lot of money already.